All round the world Bing censored images of the Tiananmen Square massacre

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Woodchopper
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All round the world Bing censored images of the Tiananmen Square massacre

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Jun 05, 2021 4:09 am


Bing, the search engine owned by Microsoft, is not displaying image results for a search for "Tank man," even when searching from the United States. The apparent censorship comes on the anniversary of China's violent crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

[...]

China censors and blocks distribution of discussion of tank man and Tiananmen Square more generally.

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Bing displays ordinary, non-image search results for tank man when searching from a U.S. IP address; the issue only impacts the images and videos tabs. Google, for its part, displays both when connecting from the same IP address.

Motherboard verified that the issue also impacts image searches on Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, which both use Bing. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment.

[...]

Multiple Twitter users also sent Motherboard images of the lack of image results on Bing while connecting from France, Switzerland, and other countries.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8v9m/ ... s-tank-man

In response:

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Friday blamed “accidental human error” for its Bing search engine not showing image results for the query “tank man” in the United States and elsewhere after users raised concerns about possible censorship around the Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary.

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Hours after Microsoft acknowledged the issue, the "tank man" search returned only pictures of tanks elsewhere in the world.

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Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this."

Smaller search engines such as DuckDuckGo that license results from Microsoft faced similar issues around "tank man" searches and said they expected a fix soon.

Rival Google (GOOGL.O) showed many results for the famous image when the "tank man" search was performed on Friday.

A significant percentage of the Microsoft employees who work on Bing are based in China, including some who work on image-recognition software, according to a former employee.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/micr ... 021-06-04/

It worked for me just now. But this is the day after the anniversary.

Though comparing an image search for ‘tianenmen square massacre’ produces very fewer images of the massacre with Bing compared to Google.

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